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Financial Freedom
How is your financial vision; can you see what looms over the horizon? Today, people live in debt, without real financial freedom — so, it isn't realistic to go along with the way the majority think or act, and expect to do well in the future. Yet, financial freedom is not just for the rich. Most of us can learn how to meet our financial needs, envision and plan for a better future, find opportunities to build wealth, and enjoy the things that money can and cannot buy. Financial freedom is about having the highest quality of life you can, beginning now.
This is the basic outline of the course:
Lesson 1: Your money and your life
Lesson 2: The world of finance
Lesson 3: Learning how to make money
Lesson 4: Wealth creation
Lesson 5: Money myths
Lesson 6: Investment
Lesson 7: The world of business
Lesson 8: Having greater success, now
Lesson 9: An eye to the future
The goals are to:
• overcome illusions and limiting social conditioning about money
• gain understanding about credit, debt, and finances
• learn how to make better financial decisions, and create wealth
• learn about saving, business, and investment
• gain perspective on everything money can and cannot buy.
Lesson 1: Your money and your life
Introduction
1. What Is Wealth?
2. How You Spend Your Life
3. The Worth of Things
4. How the Economy Works for You, or Not
5. The Economic Reality Today
6. Whose Wallet Are You Carrying?
7. Personal Finances
8. Living Richly
Exercise One
9. Everything Money Cannot Buy
10. Real Freedom
Exercise Two
11. Why It Is Hard to Deal with Money
Introduction
Welcome to the course in Financial Freedom. All of us seek freedom in our lives, and our finances can allow us more freedom, to have or do the things we want in our lives. In this course we will explore the things that money can and cannot buy.
Money is more a philosophy than an exact science, a belief system more than absolute truth, and an area of life which requires intuitive insight even more than analytical ability. The focus of this course is on the beliefs, understanding, perspective, wisdom, and intuitive insights you can bring to your financial situation. We believe that this has value to everyone, regardless of their financial situation, wealth, education, or background.
This course might save you money, but more importantly, it may save you a life misspent. You will not find financial advice here; this course is for the purpose of increasing your awareness and understanding of the way you deal with money in your life. Your own choices and behavior determine your quality of life, more than any external conditions. This course is about making choices that are more true to who you are — which are more progressive and rewarding.
Everyone's financial situation is different. This course is for educational and informational purposes only; it is not meant to replace the advice of a financial professional, nor should anything be construed as personal financial advice. If you need personal financial advice, you can find a financial planner who understands your particular financial and life situation, your needs, your goals, your level of acceptable risk in investing, and so on. In this course you will receive educational information to learn how to have the life you want, but you will not receive any specific financial advice for your unique situation.
Note: The purpose of the course is to make you think, to be more self-aware, to gain perspective, and to learn how to apply universally applicable principles to situations in your own life. What's different about Simply Self courses is that there is no "fluff" or stories about other people, no facts to memorize or "top ten" ways to make everything in your life perfect. Be aware, your comfort zone will be challenged. For some, the material may seem like common sense, something you already know but have yet to practice. For others, the realizations you make will be profoundly transformational. As in life, you decide what it means to you.
1. What Is Wealth?
Do you know what it means to be wealthy? What is the quality of your life? Do you believe it is dependent upon — or proportional to — the amount of money you have?
Did you know that the word "wealth" originally meant "well-being"? But its meaning has come to be replaced by financial factors, such as money, property, investments, and other assets. We believe in the original meaning and intent of the word wealth, which is well-being or quality of life.
Some things can be better in life with more money, and some things money does little to change. In fact, people who win huge amounts of money from the lottery often experience their lives getting a lot worse — some lives are destroyed by having all that money.
Take a look at the lives of the rich and famous, the media idols, and more often than not you will find a person who has no real sense of self, no inner peace, no true love, and little sense of worth within them — their worth comes from the approval of others. They live lives of desperation, wild highs and lows, alcohol and drug abuse, promiscuity, and egotism. Money enables this behavior.
Quality of life is not equal to quantity of money. We would define quality of life as the experience of peace, love, joy, freedom, self-determination, success, fulfillment, and goodness. None of these requires money; and, more money does not mean more quality of life.
So, if you are not yet rich, be thankful that you do not have this enormous hurdle to get over, before you have any idea what really matters in life, and what does not — before you spend every moment of your life pursuing illusions about what matters.
Money doesn't make you smarter, nor does it come with an operating manual, to tell you how to best use it. A person with an addictive personality or self-destructive behavior, given a lot of money, will use that money to cater to their addictions, illusions, denial, and self-destruction — all the while imagining that they are getting more "free." While they destroy themselves. Think about that.
The use of money requires discernment — the ability to know what is right, good, and true for you; and the willingness to do it. This course is about developing the will to do what is right, not about developing an addiction to money or what money can buy. If you plan to have more money, it is essential to learn how to deal with money in a progressive and life-supporting way.
There are people who have a lot of money, who spend their time making everything in their life exactly the way they want it to be. They have every door knob and hinge in their homes custom made to their exact specifications. They have everything custom made, in their homes, on their yachts, their clothes, everything. And, they imagine their lives are perfect. In fact, they are totally deluded. They spend their lives making every material object in their life shine — or have their servants do that for them — and never realize that the shine that comes from physical objects, no matter how bright and polished and colorful they may be, is not the Light. It is not lasting. It is not a true source of happiness or goodness or peace. It doesn't make them any better. It is not real at all.
Realize, a person can have everything in the world, and never know who they are, never know true peace, never know true love, never have a higher purpose in living, never know God. In fact, the more money people have, the more materialistic their lives, the less likely they are to have any idea what it means to be real, to know the truth within them, or to know what the grace of God is. It isn't a question of your money or your life, but how to live the life you truly want and have the money you need — living as your authentic self.
This is a course in learning what it means to be free, not trapped in unending materialistic desires, possessions, hedonism, addictions, illusions, egotism, or power games. Wouldn't that be a better life? Think about it. You need to come to this understanding yourself; the world-at-large caters to every addiction or self-delusive behavior, and prefers you to spend your life — or waste this precious life — unaware, pursuing things which do not matter at all.
It doesn't take a penny to live life gracefully, to find peace, to know what love is, or to have a higher purpose in living. If you are seeking quality of life, you need to know that nothing can keep you from that, unless you insist on looking for it in all the wrong places, or equating it with what money can buy.
6. Whose Wallet Are You Carrying?
A popular series of commercials asks what credit card you are carrying in your wallet. We will ask a more fundamental question: whose wallet are you carrying?
Before you can understand how to be financially free, you need to see precisely how you are not free. And one of those ways relates to your wallet. You imagine it is your wallet. After all, you bought it or perhaps received it as a gift; and you surely own it. It's yours. But the money in it isn't really yours. You are basically leasing wallet space, which you fill with money, and then someone else gets to take that money out of your wallet. It's really someone else's money.
How can that be?
Americans have negative savings; they owe more money than they have. They are living on borrowed money, on debt. The things you buy on credit aren't really yours. Your home isn't yours; your car isn't yours — at least not until they are fully paid for, and you have no debt whatsoever. If you have more money going out than coming in, none of the money that temporarily fills your wallet is really yours. You're just holding it, temporarily, making believe it's yours, until you have to give to whomever you owe money to. It's really their money, all along. You only make believe it's yours, for a while. Of course, this is just a metaphor, but it holds a lot of truth about the way we live in our society, today.
Maybe you haven't purchased a house. Even then, you have likely signed a lease, which means you owe the full amount of the lease, most likely payable monthly. You have signed an agreement that has put you in debt for the full amount of the lease. The money you earn until the lease is paid in full, which needs to go towards rent, is not really yours. You just get to sign it over to its rightful owner. And if you don't give them their money, you won't have a place to live.
When you live in debt, you basically lease wallet space, and yet imagine you really have that money to spend, that it is yours. Credit card companies (banks) even send their customers cash advance checks — blank checks — that they can write for thousands of dollars, and their customers imagine that it is really their money.
In reality, they haven't earned it, and it isn't really theirs. And, they are unlikely to get out of debt or pay it back anytime soon. Banks are counting on that, so that they can keep earning interest without you ever paying off your debts. You feel so entitled to that money, so deserving of everything. And, if companies are throwing money at you, well, who are you to say no. Well, that is exactly what you need to say: No. Of course, then you don't get to buy all the things you desire but can't afford — as if that is a bad thing.
Americans are highly programmed consumers; they want what they want when they want it, the sooner the better. And those who provide goods and services want to remove any hesitation you might have toward buying from them — and that includes getting you to impulse buy, buy beyond your means, buy what you do not really need but only desire, and disregard the quiet voice of conscience. In fact, in so many stores, there is incessant loud music to make sure you cannot hear yourself think, and you cannot hear that little voice that says, "You can't afford this," or "You don't really need this." All the while, your ego feels like it is being served, like you are getting everything you deserve — and in reality you are digging yourself into a financial pit.
So, you walk around with a wallet. And the money that goes into does not accrue to you. Someone else gets all of it. If you tell yourself that's just how you buy something, or that's the way things work, you are believing a lie. And living a lie. That may be how things are, but that doesn't mean that's the way they should be. There is a better way to live.
And, it begins with actually owning your own wallet, paying yourself first, and getting out of debt.
This is what Americans, and those around the world who are adopting American values, must realize. Debt isn't freeing them, it is destroying them. The common financial programming means that someone else is profiting by disadvantaging or exploiting you. And, you are already greatly programmed by your society; your behavior may seem to be "free" but it is within very narrow and self-limiting constraints.
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